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Metaphysical Math Missive • Scientific Faith • Time For Tallis • Flaws & Freedoms • (Epi)Phenomenal Response • Angry Re: Marks • Hob-Nobbing With Hume • Capitalism Has Value, But No Values

Metaphysical Math Missive

Dear Editor: I enjoyed Massimo Pigliucci’s column in Issue 84 in which, after reading James Robert Brown’s Philosophy of Mathematics, he seemed to find mathematical Platonism more plausible. Mathematical Platonism is the view that because there exist no perfect mathematical objects in the world, such as perfect circles, they must exist elsewhere as non-spatiotemporal, abstract entities. But as I said in my article on mathematical knowledge in Issue 81, philosophers have asked: how can we come into causal contact with such abstract objects beyond space and time? And thus, how can we ever have knowledge of them? In the book Pigliucci mentions, one of the ways Brown tries to get around this argument against Platonism is by attacking the Causal Theory of Knowledge (CTK). CTK claims that one has knowledge of an object or state of affairs only if that knowledge is caused by that object or state of affairs – through observation, for example. Here Brown appeals to a peculiar phenomenon in quantum mechanics called quantum entanglement.

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